Newsletter: 14/07/2012

Office news

I hope everyone is keeping themselves warm this winter. Our office heaters are out and going full blast most days. It's official, Priscilla is expecting a baby girl, she is looking forward very much to a new addition to her family in two weeks time or thereabouts. She is with us until the end of next week before she goes on maternity leave. So if you should have any tricky accounting questions you've been brooding on, give her a call soon. Of course we will do our best to cover for her while she's away. She expects to be back at work in three months.

Russell Bell

Change to Suggested Purchase Order Generation

You can now use a combination of automatic and manually calculated quantities when using Fastbase's Suggested Order Generation function. There's a new option on the suggested order generation report (Purchasing - Suggested Order Generation) called "Order Highest Quantity?". With this option selected, the quantity will be calculated using both the automatic and the manual method, but only the highest quantity will be displayed and used for re-ordering purposes. Give us a call if you've questions about this.

GL Transaction Listing report

We have added a new Report Type option to the GL transaction listing report, "Payments and receipts only (including unposted)". With this option selected the report will only include payment and receipt transactions, i.e. excluding journals or opening balance transactions etc.

Creating normal stock items from non-stock items when converting quote into order

Depending on how Fastbase is configured for you, you may have an option to turn non-stock items into stock items when entering sales orders or quotes. So if you added a non-stock item to a quote (which was later turned into an order and then an invoice), and didn't create the stock item at the time, you might not have had another chance until an invoice was created.

Now when you convert a quote into an order, if the quote contains non-stock items, a message will appear asking if you want to create the new stock items and convert the non-stock lines into normal stock lines. This new behaviour is controlled by a setup option, let us know if you're interested.

Maintaining Goods Receipts

We've fixed a minor bug when entering or maintaining goods receipts. The total quantity displayed at the bottom of the screen was not updating until the goods receipt was closed an re-opened. It has been fixed so that the total quantity updates as you enter the lines.

Display total cost and GP% for Build-Misc line items

First some background. The Build-Misc part is a non-diminishing stock item that is used on sales orders and quotes to represent a combination of other parts. When you enter a Build-Misc part on an order or quote, you enter a description and a sell price that will represent some or all of the rest of the lines on that order/quote. Any lines entered after the Build misc part have a Yes/No option, "Print this line", that determines whether they are part of the Build-Misc part or not. For the parts that are part of the Build-Misc, their descriptions do not appear on the printed quote or order, nor do they contribute to the value of the order/quote. Only the Build-Misc line item is represented.

Since the Build-Misc part is non-diminishing, the cost on the Build-Misc line item itself would normally be zero and the GP 100%. We have added a new feature so that when doing orders and quotes, the cost displayed on a Build-Misc line item is the total cost of all the other normal stock items that make up that Build-Misc item. The displayed GP% is calculated using this cost and the entered sell price of the Build-Misc line item. The cost and GP% of the Build-Misc part shown in other areas of Fastbase (e.g. Part Enquiry, Sales Analysis Reports) is not affected.

Automatic Disabling of Overdue Customers

Fastbase currently allows control of customer's credit to 30-day intervals. We have added a new feature allowing disabling of overdue customers based on their exact days-due, i.e. the current date minus the date of the oldest unpaid invoice. With this new feature it is possible to set a specific number of days after which a customer with unpaid invoices becomes disabled. An overnight process checks for overdue customers and sends an email to yourself (or your accounts staff) listing all customers who have been automatically disabled due to unpaid invoices.

Of course Fastbase already allows monitoring and control of customer credit, but these features allow control to 30-day intervals only. Under Customer Enquiry/Maintenance, there is already a Maximum Days Credit field, but this only has options for 30, 60, 90, and 120 days, or unlimited (no credit limit). When the customer Period-End is run, it is possible to disable any customers who have exceeded their Maximum Days Credit. They are considered to have exceeded their Maximum Days Credit if they have an unpaid invoice from a period that is older than their Maximum Days Credit.

Also, when you enter a sales order or invoice (and select the customer) Fastbase currently pops-up a warning if the customer is overdue. This is based on the 30, 60, 90 day rules. The Aged Trial Balance report also works this way. We haven't changed these existing features, they continue to use the 30-day intervals. This new automatic-disabling feature can be enabled via a setup option, give us a call if you're interested.

Future-dated transactions not included in Customer/Supplier Balances

Currently for balances shown under Customer Enquiry and Supplier Enquiry, Fastbase includes future-dated transactions in the balance, up to the end of the current month. We've added an option that if enabled, displays the balances as at the current date, not including these future transactions. This may be useful if you do a lot of future-dated transactions within the current month, and want to be able to see what the customer's current balance is without having to run a report. This behaviour is controlled by a setup option, so let us know if you're interested.

Newsletters

Select from the following list of newsletters that have been sent out.

28/11/2013 Office News, Quoting for items that aren't recorded as parts in Fastbase, Stream-lined entry of new part assembly transactions, Sorting of customer notes on the appointments screen, Maintaining a customer note - "Complete" button save and exit